


Find You in the Morning Sun

by EmilianaDarling



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Broken!Steve, Determined!Natasha, Dubious Ethics, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, References to Brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilianaDarling/pseuds/EmilianaDarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sometimes Natasha can’t think about the stars and stripes of Steve’s costume without seeing red and yellow dance behind her eyelids.</i>
</p><p>Steve is having trouble adjusting to life in his brave new world. Natasha helps him as best she can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find You in the Morning Sun

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been a long time coming, and I'm very excited to share it with you all! For me, the relationship between Steve and Natasha was one of the most fascinating ones in the whole film. I really wanted to explore that relationship, especially the significance it could have in the film's aftermath. I hope you enjoy, and as always please let me know what you think! (My tumblr is emilianadarling.tumblr.com if you want to join me for general fandom flailing.)
> 
> I started writing this story back when _The Avengers_ first came out; as such, it does not factor in information that we have received since then. The events of Iron Man 3 and spoilers from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D are not taken into account. The title comes from "I'll Be Seeing You" by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal.

To the casual observer, this particular apartment building must look virtually identical to any number of brownstones that line the edges of Brooklyn’s worn streets. It is neat and clean and obviously well-maintained, nestled unobtrusively between two almost-identical buildings on either side. Painted a mild and easily-forgettable cream, there should be nothing to distinguish this particular structure from any of the others on the street. 

Natasha Romanoff, however, genuinely cannot remember a time when she had the luxury of being a casual observer. 

The cream-coloured paint has been more recently touched-up than any structure in a two-mile radius. The iron railings on the entrance stairs are at least five years newer than that of the neighbouring apartments. And although most of the individual apartment windows are decorated with flowery drapes or house plants, there is absolutely no activity visible through any of them. The entire front of the building is clearly for show.

It lets her know that she’s come to the right place.

Scanning the area for security cameras only takes a few minutes; two positioned across the street, one sneakily insinuated into the molding above the doorframe of the main entrance itself. A few electronic scramblers solves the problem quickly enough. All the S.H.I.E.L.D agents on the other end of the feed will be able to see is pre-recorded footage of the same street earlier in the week.

It’s an unnecessary precaution, perhaps, but Natasha is nothing if not thorough. All that out of the way, she walks casually up to the door, fishes a plain-looking key out of her jeans pocket, and steps right inside without trouble.

Once inside the building, her suspicion about the decorated windows and quaint exterior are immediately confirmed. The change is immediate, and it is as though she has walked out of a New York street and into a secret bunker. No civilians live here, that much is obvious: instead of a lobby, the entire building is S.H.I.E.L.D through and through. Cool metallic walls and airy spaces, and only one hallway to take. 

A security panel on the wall begins to emit a low beeping noise. Natasha disables it quickly – breaking and entering into protected facilities is almost always easy, but it’s child’s play if you helped _design_ the security system in question – and continues on her way.

Three flights of stairs, another alarm system, and a door with a ridiculously easy lock to pick later, and Natasha is standing in the middle of Steve Rogers’s apartment. She can hear the shower running a few doors down. Once it becomes apparent that no one is going to come charging at her, Natasha allows herself to take more than a cursory look around.

To call the space an ‘apartment’ is more than a bit of an understatement: the home that S.H.I.E.L.D designed for Steve to live in after he left their recovery facility is absurdly large by New York standards. There are stairs leading up to an entire second level, and it looks very much as though someone transplanted an entire five-bedroom family home from the suburbs into the middle of the city. Judging from what she saw outside, she concludes that S.H.I.E.L.D had taken the liberty of dedicating the entire top three floors into one massive living space.

Natasha wonders whose idea it was to relocate Steve to Brooklyn in the first place. It strikes her as a decidedly sentimental gesture; as an attempt to make him feel more at home.

She also wonders who managed to fuck up such a perfectly decent idea so spectacularly.  The space is massive, and isolated, and Natasha has a sneaking suspicion that it must make Steve feel even farther away than ever from the neighbourhood he grew up in. The entire place is all wooden floors and clean white walls, inoffensive paintings and so little furniture that it makes something tighten uncomfortably in her chest. A kitchen, a living room, an entertainment area, a hallway leading to more closed doorways. From this angle, Natasha can just barely see that the stairs lead up to what looks like a massive space full of exercise equipment.  It’s all military-clean and quietly empty, and the only clutter is what appears to be an overflowing pile of drawings – on scrap paper, in notebooks, on the corners of newspapers – that are spread across the coffee table in the living room. 

The only thing in the room that has an ounce of personality to it is the bookshelf in the living room. It’s overflowing, _bursting_ with a variety of reprints and originals of old books that she categorizes with a neutral eye. Science fiction and biographies and pirate stories and murder mysteries, with a whole enormous section dedicated to hefty World War Two volumes. Not selected by Rogers himself, she thinks, but definitely selected with care specifically for him. A few of the books are missing from the shelves and stacked on the table, and one of them has a slip of paper tucked into the pages as a bookmark.

 After Natasha finishes taking it all in ( _escape routes and good areas for cover and available weapons, all noted and filed away just in case, always in case_ ), she walks over to the obnoxiously large kitchen table, pulls out a chair, and waits.

It only takes fifteen minutes before the shower turns off, and Natasha Romanoff is extremely good at waiting. She was made that way, after all.

The door to the bathroom opens a few minutes later and a freshly-scrubbed Steve steps out of it in a cloud of steam, still toweling down his damp hair. She’s pleased to note that he’s clothed, even if just in sweat pants and a t-shirt. He has a nice body, and it doesn’t particularly matter to her either way what he might be wearing, but having some clothes on might make the situation easier for him.

Steve blinks and freezes mid-step when he sees her, his hand holding the towel stuttering and stilling awkwardly. She holds his gaze and doesn’t react, calmly waiting for his surprise to subside.

“Miss Romanoff,” says Steve awkwardly after a few extremely long seconds, and his eyes dart almost imperceptibly to the door before coming back to rest on her again. The look of earnest confusion on his face is almost _sweet._

“Captain Rogers,” Natasha acknowledges, giving a small nod and repressing the smile that is attempting to tug at her lips. “I told you before that you can call me Natasha.”

“Natasha,” he corrects himself, squinting even more in confusion. He inclines his head ever-so-slightly to one side. “Is there...” Steve begins, cutting himself off abruptly. He starts again a moment later. “Is there some kind of emergency you need me for?”

“Director Fury would have contacted you by now if there was an emergency.” It’s all the explanation she really wants to give right now, so it’s all she says. Steve blinks.

“I see.” He furrows his brow for a second. He licks his lips, and then –

“Can I offer you something? Tea, coffee? Water?”

Natasha almost _does_ laugh then, something warm and distinctly affectionate flooding her chest. She can feel a smile curling at her lips, too, because it’s just so _perfect_. “Tea would be lovely, thank you.”

Steve nods, then quietly hangs the damp towel over the back of one of the chairs and moves into the kitchen to make tea. The fact that he doesn’t ask her what kind of tea she would prefer strikes Natasha as disproportionately funny, too, because it probably means that he only has the one kind. She watches him pick up the electric kettle from its cradle and take it over to the sink to fill it with water.

The truth is, though, that Natasha still isn’t entirely sure if she’s _right_ about Steve Rogers. The dark circles under his eyes could conceivably be from illness ( _unlikely_ ), or a side-effect of having his body reanimated after almost seventy years on ice ( _so long after the fact?_ ). The way Steve has retreated from the public eye and kept to himself after the fight against Loki doesn’t necessarily mean anything either. She doesn’t know him especially well, after all. Maybe he’s just a reclusive person. It’s always important to consider every possibility.

If Natasha is wrong, she can still just share a cup of tea and then leave without explanation. Clint is always telling her that people half-expect her to do strange, slightly unnerving things all the time. She can always walk away.

... or she could _,_ at least, before she watches Steve turn back with the full – and very much _electric_ –kettle and move to instinctively place it on one of the burners on the stove.  

Steve seems to notice his mistake at the same time she does. He catches himself mid-way through the action, abruptly freezing in place so that the kettle is left hovering right above the element.

It isn’t the action itself that clinches it for her so much, though, as it is his _expression_.  As soon as Steve realizes his mistake, his entire face collapses into a look of such quiet devastation that his pain is almost _palpable_. He winces harshly, shakes his head, and moves to place the kettle back into its cradle before flicking the switch to make the water boil.

It’s too late, though. Natasha’s seen enough.

While the kettle boils, Steve scoops sugar into a bowl, pours milk into a small jug, and gets two mugs ready with stunted movements that speaks of little familiarity with bagged tea.

In her own home, Natasha drinks her tea from delicate china cups handmade in a small town outside St. Petersburg. She has a deeply paradoxical love for beautiful breakable things that no amount of time in the Red Room was ever able to quite get rid of, and the old-fashioned spectacle of her tea set at home is tremendously satisfying to her on a level she can’t quite explain. Those tea cups are always filled with smoky, complex teas cut with natural herbal blends: Lapsang Souchong mixed with lemongrass, mint and dried orange cut with a pinch of Huo Yao Cha.

Steve serves them strong black tea in solid white mugs, but she almost feels just as pleased as she would with one of her own blends when he sets hers in front of her.

“Thank you,” says Natasha, the first words either of them has spoken in well over five minutes.

 “You’re welcome,” murmurs Steve, settling himself into the chair across from her and pressing his own steeping teabag against the side of his mug with a teaspoon. His eyes are steely and his back is straight, and he has a look about him that says he isn’t willing to put off addressing the elephant in the room anymore. “I’m guessing Fury sent you?” he asks, the words clipped and to the point.

“Right in one,” Natasha lies coolly, leaning against the back of her chair. Steve doesn’t need to know that no one has given her any orders to be here, that this is a mission entirely of her own making. It may very well be easier this way. She shrugs, pursing her lips. “You haven’t made a public appearance since you spoke at Agent Coulson’s funeral.”

Steve winces, his fingers tightening around the handle of the teaspoon. “I suppose I haven’t,” he says, voice carefully neutral. Natasha shrugs.

“Thor’s back. Did you know that?”

In the span of a moment, Steve’s face shifts from cautious restraint to earnest, pleased surprise. “Thor’s back from Asgard?” he asks eagerly, leaning forward across the table between them and sounding alive for the first time in their conversation. His eyes are almost painfully blue, wide and happy and not entirely believing. “When? _Why_? Has – has Loki escaped from prison,  or –?”

“Not that we’re aware of,” says Natasha, taking a long sip of her tea. It’s strong, almost too hot to drink. The heat of it burns her throat on the way down. “With the tesseract back, traveling between dimensions isn’t half the chore it used to be. Our branch in Tromsø alerted us as to his arrival last night; he went straight to Jane Foster as soon as he arrived. The branch sent us a message from him a few hours ago.” It had been grandiose and godlike, apparently: all hyperbole and sweeping statements and grand proclamations.

“The Cliff’s Notes version – that is, the summarization,” she adds, when Steve’s brow furrows almost unnoticeably in quiet incomprehension, “is that Thor thinks that he can be of more use here on Earth than he is in Asgard. Defending the weak, avenging the fallen, using his godly powers for something larger than himself – you know how he thinks. His father will continue to rule in Asgard, and he’ll be assisting us here indefinitely until he’s needed back home.”

“Wow,” says Steve after a moment, a broad smile starting to spread across his face. “I didn’t think... but I’m glad. I like Thor a lot. He’s a good man.”

“He is.” Natasha pauses, quirking her head to one side. “Mr. Stark’s already approached him about his little plan for redesigning Stark Tower in New York. I assume he spoke to you as well.”

All at once, Steve’s whole body becomes tense and stiff. Internally, Natasha catalogues the way his smile becomes stiff and false on his lips; the way his back gets military-straight in his chair.

“Yeah,” says Steve stiffly, picking up his mug and staring into it without actually taking a sip. “Yeah, Stark talked to me about that all right.”

_Bingo._

“S.H.I.E.L.D took it for granted that you would want to take Mr. Stark up on his offer.” Natasha keeps her voice carefully neutral. “Lead your troops, be down in the barracks, all that jazz.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve’s voice is uncharacteristically gruff, almost defensive. “Maybe I don’t want all that responsibility. I never led in the army, you know that? Officially, I’m nothing more than an up-jumped soldier.” He laughs, but there is no humour in it. “A poster boy for a government I don’t even know anymore.”

Sometimes Natasha can’t think about the stars and stripes of Steve’s costume without seeing red and yellow dance behind her eyelids. It makes her remember cold metal rooms and droning voices, the way the restraints would cut into her wrists as she strained against them. Makes her remember the _pain pain pain pain **pain**_ that would hit like a tidal wave and make her forget to wonder what her old name used to be.

She’s seen pictures of what Steve used to look like, before the American government stuck him full of needles and pumped serum into his veins.  In those black and white polaroids that had been scanned and saved to the S.H.I.E.L.D database, he’d been small and scrawny – but with those same bright eyes full of hope and defiance and the unflinching desire to do what was right.

The photos had made her wonder what she would have looked like if her own government had never got hold of her. If she would have grown up to be lanky, or ugly, or plump, or pretty.

Those are questions that she’ll never know the answer to.

“Mmm,” Natasha hums, taking a long sip of tea and not bothering to point out that that there is so much more to Steve Rogers than a spangled outfit and enhanced strength.  She’s good at reading people – has made a living of it over the years – and Steve isn’t going to respond well to flattery right now. 

Steve seems to jolt out of his reverie at the sound of her voice, his eyebrows furrowing together in confusion. “What does Director Fury care about Tony’s new hidey-hole, anyways? I would’ve thought he’d be horrified at the idea of Tony running anything superhuman-related.”

“Oh, he is,” says Natasha, feeling her lips curve into a small smile. “But there’s not too much he can say to the higher-ups.  Letting a civilian be in charge of our accommodation would mean fairly steep financial savings, especially if Stark is looking to take care of training facilities and transportation as well. It also gets rid of some of the liability of hosting a group of potentially violent and unstable human beings: with a civilian coordinating our geographic location, that’s some of the legal pressure off S.H.I.E.L.D in case something goes wrong.” She shrugs. “The idea of having us all in one place in case of an emergency is fairly appealing as well, as I understand it. Less commute time against the evil monsters.”

“Us,” says Steve, blue eyes meeting hers across the table, and it takes Natasha a half-second longer than she would like to figure out what he means. She winces internally, cursing herself for showing too many cards.

“Us,” she confirms smoothly, because there’s no point in lying about it now.

After the battle for New York City, she and Clint had both been given a long leave of absence from any active duty. Clint’s had been longer than hers, of course, and had been prefaced by long days of psychiatric evaluations and rigorous physical and chemical testing to ensure that no trace of Loki remained in his body anymore. Clint had put on a brave face for the tests, for the eventual stamp of approval, for the long drive out to the cabin in Michigan that the two of them tended to use for recuperation after hard missions.

He hadn’t broken down until they got there; until the rest of the world was miles away, and she was the only person to see the panic and fear and sagging relief on his face.  Natasha isn’t always so good with emotions – not real ones, anyways – but she tries to make exceptions for Clint where she can. He’s Clint, after all, and she had come so _close_ to losing him. Plus, it would have been a lie to say that she hadn’t also been badly shaken by the experience.

They both need a change. A different direction, a way to wipe their ledgers clean. The Avenger Initiative had never been designed with either of them in mind, but there’s nothing Fury or all of S.H.I.E.L.D can do about that if the two of them move into Stark’s new headquarters.

But Clint won’t go without her, and Natasha isn’t going to do this if they aren’t going to do it _right._  

Across the table, Steve takes a long gulp of tea – no sugar, no milk, no luxuries of any kind. Still on a rationing mindset, she catalogues silently. When he swallows the tea down, he tilts his head to one side and gives her a look that makes her feel uncomfortably and unusually transparent.

“Why?” Steve asks simply, and she doesn’t have to clarify what he’s asking about.

There are so many things she could say to that, if she wanted.

Because Stark isn’t just a ridiculous human being, all pomp and glitter and hollow the way she saw him when they first met. Because Thor _is_ a good man in a world where good men die young or turn sour, and that’s something worth protecting by itself. Because Bruce may be the monster that roared in her nightmares for days after he chased her through the helicarrier, but the man beneath is worth so much more than that. 

Because Natasha doesn’t trust. She just _doesn’t_ ; no one but Clint ( _and that’s different because he’s Clint, he’s the exception, the most important person on a list of marks and allies and enemies)_ but no one else unless it’s just for the duration of a mission. But she’s fairly certain she could learn to trust Steve Rogers. Maybe even the rest of them, one day – and she honestly doesn’t know what to do with that information.

Because Natasha Romanoff and Captain Steve Rogers are far, far more similar than either of them should ever have to admit out loud, and the question of why _Steve_ doesn’t want to move in with Tony Stark is far more interesting.

Because sometimes people need to be broken in order to be put back together again.

Instead of responding, Natasha finishes off her last sip of tea – almost sickly sweet from sugar pooled at the bottom of the cup – and rises gracefully from her chair.

“Thank you so much for your hospitality, Captain Rogers,” she says cordially, watching him get to his feet as soon as he registers her standing. “It was lovely to speak to you.”

“Thanks for stopping by,” says Steve, sounding slightly uneasy but mostly a bit confused. “It was... nice, talking with you. I appreciate you telling me about Thor.”

“You’re welcome.” Natasha smiles, tilting her head to one side. “I’ll be sure to be in touch soon.”

Without another word, she turns around and walks toward the door.

If Steve has any questions, he doesn’t ask any of them before she leaves.

 

\--

 

In the three days following their conversation Natasha is not in the country, away on a job extracting sensitive documents from the personal home of a very wealthy man in Austria. When she gets back to headquarters to deliver the goods and file her report, feeling slightly jet-lagged but more than a little satisfied at a job well done, Agent Hill catches her eye as she walks into the command room.

“Brace yourself,” Agent Hill mutters under her breath as she passes, their shoulders brushing, and Natasha has a few seconds to tense up before Director Fury turns and greets her with a look that could probably peel paint right off a car.

“Director,” she acknowledges, feeling a sudden flicker of concern that something went wrong in Austria without her noticing. The word only makes his one visible eye narrow further, though, and the distinctly personal way his anger is radiating off of him lets her know exactly what this is about.

_Ah._

She purses her lips and straightens her back as Fury jerks his head in the direction of his office. He leads them into the room with stiff professionalism even as the other agents try to pretend that they aren’t curious about what’s going on. As soon as the two of them are behind closed doors, however, he turns on her with almost _explosive_ anger on his face.

 “What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing, Agent?” Fury demands, the full measure of his displeasure clear in his voice. He doesn’t give her any time to respond. He holds up a hand for emphasis. “Captain Rogers is extremely unstable right now, all the psychs say so. And after that disaster of a wakeup and the shit show that was New York, our organization has made the decision to keep our distance and let him adjust.” Fury’s voice lowers, speaking each word with careful precision. “So what, may I ask, do you think you were doing by showing up on his doorstep four days ago?”

Natasha cocks her head to one side, voice low and calm. “Sir, my meeting with Captain Rogers was one of a purely personal nature.”

Across from her, Fury raises an eyebrow. “A personal meeting that you achieved by deactivating our surveillance and sneaking past our security.”

“Which I did through the use of my own personal skills, not S.H.I.E.L.D time, staff, or funds.”

She thinks she can see his mouth quirk slightly at that, and some of the tension leaves his shoulders. Fury crosses his arms in front of his chest, and for the first time he looks honestly _concerned_ instead of angry. A conflicted expression crosses his face for a few moments, and when it breaks Natasha knows that Fury isn’t going to give her nearly as much trouble as he could.

“Natasha,” he warns, voice low and serious, going from an angry boss  to a concerned friend in a single word. “I seriously hope you know what you’re doing. Rogers is unpredictable. We don’t want to scare him off.”

“With all due respect, sir,” she responds, feeling her eyes narrow. “I’m not too sure that leaving him entirely on his own in a strange world is the best course of action either.”

He looks at her seriously for one second, two, three – and shakes his head, turning to walk out the door.

“If anyone asks, I never heard about any of this,” he sighs, shaking his head in a long-suffering way as he heads out the door.

“Of course not,” says Natasha, straightening up and pulling on a veneer of flawless professionalism as she follows him out.

 

\--

 

 **From:  917-240-1267 (** **2012-06-14 14:57)  
** Hey, Cap – we have a proposition for you.

 **From: Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:04)  
** Sorry who is this

 **From:  917-240-1267 (2012-06-14 15:05)  
** This is Natasha. Director Fury asked me to contact you, but quite frankly the more pressing concern right now is your grammar.

 **From:  917-240-1267 (2012-06-14 15:05)  
** It’s atrocious.

 **From:  917-240-1267 (2012-06-14 15:06)**  
I was under the impression that they taught this stuff in the 40s, Steve.

 **From: Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:10)  
**  Hello Natasha  its not my fault its this telephone fury gave me it has no punctual on it

 **From: Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:11)  
** Punctual

 **From: Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:11)  
** Punctual

 **From: Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:13)  
** Punctuation i swear to god im going to kill stark for inventing this thing

 **From:  917-240-1267 (** **2012-06-14 15:15)  
** Cap, you spent the war combating advanced Hydra technology and you’ve fought flying aliens in New York City. You can’t handle a phone?

 **From: Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:17)  
** I know how yo use a telephone and a keyboard im not quit e that old this things just putting words jn my mouth

 **From:  917-240-1267 (** **2012-06-14 15:20)  
** You have a StarkPhone? Go back to the main menu. Click ‘Settings’, ‘Texting Options’, and turn off predictive text. Go back to the little envelope icon to message me again. You can make capital letters by clicking the arrow pointing up. Clicking the icon that says ‘!123’ will get you a punctuation menu.

 **From Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:35)  
**... good lord, this is so much better. Thank you!

 **From:  917-240-1267 (** **2012-06-14 15:37)  
** Don’t sweat it. I’ll see you next Monday at noon at 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Westchester County.

 **From Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:40)  
** Wait, Natasha, what are we doing?

 **From Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:46)  
** Is there an emergency?

 **From Cptn. Steve Rogers (** **2012-06-14 15:51)  
** Natasha?

 **AUTOMATED RESPONSE (** **2012-06-14 15:51)  
** THE CUSTOMER YOU HAVE MESSAGED IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE. PLEASE CHECK TO MAKE SURE YOU ENTERED THE PHONE NUMBER CORRECTLY.

**\--**

When Natasha arrives at the specific neighbourhood of ornate gardens and impressive homes that is her destination, she parks her S.H.I.E.L.D. issue black sedan a few streets away and walks the rest of the distance. The mansion is as large and stately as ever, surrounded by what some people might call ‘grounds’ and bordered by a solid brick wall.

It’s also surrounded by what she knows to be one of the most advanced security systems outside her own institution, but that isn’t as readily apparent.

The old-fashioned watch on her wrist informs her that the time is eleven thirty, exactly half an hour before Steve is due to arrive. She always makes a habit of arriving at appointments beforehand to scope out the situation, although this particular assignment only warrants a half an hour. Had this been a job with a higher likelihood of potential threats she would have done her check surreptitiously and ‘arrived’ properly once the mark was already in sight.

As it is, though, there isn’t much need for that kind of discretion. The bi-monthly inspection of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters is one of her easiest and most routine responsibilities – barely enough of a task to justify asking Steve along.

 _He’s a soldier, though,_ Natasha reminds herself, starting a preliminary walk around the school’s property. _More importantly, he’s Steve_. _He’ll follow orders right up until he won’t._

The rumbling of a motorcycle alerts her to Steve’s arrival – almost at twelve noon on the dot – far before he actually comes into view. He pulls up smoothly beside her in civilian clothes; leathers and boots and dark blue jeans, as well as one noticeable addition from the last time she saw him with his bike.

“You got a helmet,” she observes, quirking an eyebrow as he removes the somewhat old-fashioned helmet that she strongly suspects S.H.I.E.L.D made especially for him. “Worried about the dangers of New York traffic?”

Steve laughs. His blond hair and smooth face are slightly sweaty from the ride, but his eyes are bright and shining from what she can only assume to be the freedom of the road.  “More like worried about upsetting other people in the cars next to me,” he explains, dismounting from the motorcycle and shrugging at her sheepishly. “ _I_ may know that getting in a car accident won’t kill me, but they don’t, right? Don’t wanna spook ‘em.”

That’s enough to make Natasha smile, and she doesn’t try to hide it. “Good point,” she says, thinking but not articulating that riding with a helmet also probably helps Steve to go around the city unrecognized. “Got that phone all figured out?

He groans, shaking his head. “I’m trying,” he says, unzipping his leather jacket and sliding his helmet under one arm to carry. “Been getting a whole lot more practice lately, which helps, I suppose. Tony Stark got hold of my telephone number somehow.”

“Did he,” says Natasha, not bothering to make the faux-interested statement sound any more genuine than it is. Steve gives her the beagly-eye for a few moments before he seems to realize that she isn’t going to admit to anything. He shrugs.

“Dr. Banner has my number now, too,” he continues, shrugging. His voice is even, but underneath the surface is a layer of unease, and uncertainty, and something else that makes dull pain throb sympathetically in the base of Natasha’s stomach. “He, um. He doesn’t send as many messages, though. They’re mostly apologizing for whatever Stark sent.”

“I imagine those require a great many apologies,” says Natasha, the corner of her mouth quirking playfully, and Steve’s laugh breaks some of the tension. “C’mon, Cap, let’s go. Basic surveillance.”

He lets her lead the way, leaving his motorcycle parked across the street. They walk together, Natasha guiding the two of them in a slow patrol around the massive brick wall that surrounds the entire estate. Steve doesn’t try to take charge; doesn’t walk slightly ahead of her, or ask badger her with questions in an attempt to get more details about the nature of the surveillance mission. Instead, he walks beside in comfortable silence, occasionally scanning around but not making any attempts to take control.

It’s the same confident trust in her capabilities that had completely thrown her for a loop the first time they met. Because Natasha has built her entire career – her entire _life_ – on people underestimating her. Normal people, good people; people who claim to know better but never seem to. When Coulson had told her that Captain America had been found alive beneath the ice, Natasha had assumed without even thinking about it that a 1940s man would be especially easy to play, should anything go wrong.

When she finally met him, though, Steve didn’t end up being anything like she expected.

She didn’t find out why until she hacked into his S.H.I.E.L.D file. From there, tracking down information about Agent Margaret Carter – her marksmanship records, her promotions through the ranks against the odds, the record of her leave of absence following Captain Steve Rogers’s disappearance – was easy enough.

When they round the corner, the almost-familiar brush of a mind reaching out to touch her own comes like the ghost of a whisper against her thoughts. It would be enough to startle her into pulling her weapon if she weren’t familiar with the sensation – and she knows full well that she can only sense the scan because the telepath is choosing to let her. She knows the feel of him; almost fatherly and so very calm as he smoothly avoids looking directly at her thoughts. It’s all part of the dance they do. Mentally, Natasha raises her hands in the air against the presence as it checks her, not prying or digging but merely double-checking intent.

Next to her, Steve halts in mid-step, clutching at his head. “What’s –?” he asks, but Natasha quiets him with the shake of a head. It’s almost like a _rustling_ feeling; as though someone is combing their fingers through strands of hair, or skimming the words on a page thick with text. Natasha gives into the sensation as best she can, allows the now-familiar presence to politely brush over the thoughts nearest the surface. It’s like free falling: controlled surrender is the best way to get through it. She knows that by now.

After a few more seconds, the telepath eases away. The imprint of an apology for the intrusion stays on Natasha’s – and, she can only assume, Steve’s – brain for a few seconds after the feeling is gone.

“What was _that_?” Steve asks jerkily after a moment, his voice rising as he twists his head in an attempt to find what caused the sensation.

“It’s okay, Cap,” says Natasha, glancing over to where the peaks of the stately manor are just visible beyond the brick of the wall at the perimeter. “Just the man who runs that school over there. He’s friendly.” Steve gives her a look, silently and sternly asking for elucidation without speaking any words, so she explains.

“That building over there is a school for ‘gifted youngsters’,” Natasha begins, the invisible quotes around the last two words audible in her tone. She starts to patrol again, and Steve follows alongside her. “Mutants. Know what those are?”

Steve nods, understanding written across his face. “I read about them in the newspaper,” he says, and for a second Natasha is struck by an extremely vivid mental image of Steve sitting at the big dining room table in his house, hands wrapped around an actual physical newspaper that someone – almost certainly Coulson before his death – got him a subscription for. A wave of regret and poignancy hits her harder than she’s expecting.

“It struck me as... worrisome, if I can speak plainly. The newspapers have been using all kinds of language that doesn’t sit especially well with me.” Steve’s voice lowers, his brow furrowing in an unreadable expression. “They’re really talking about mandatory registration?”

“They are,” Natasha confirms, and something dark and deeply sad passes over Steve’s face.

“Thought things had changed, I guess,” he murmurs simply, eyes on the ground.

“It’s controversial stuff. It’s why we’re here: the government wants us to keep tabs on them, make sure they aren’t getting up to anything that could pose a threat to national security.” She lets out a little huff of air, the two of them still pacing slowly around. “Fury has us do an inspection of the grounds from afar every few months, just to show willing. The man who runs the school may be peaceful, but he’s also powerful: if he didn’t want us around, we wouldn’t be here.” She shrugs. “Fury’s had me on patrol duty here specifically over the past few months.”

Of all the people for Charles Xavier to open up like a book and judge to not be a threat, Natasha is probably one of the last people she herself would have chosen. It makes her half uncomfortable and half confused, but she would never articulate any of that out loud.

“I suppose I just don’t understand how the same people who cheered us on in New York could be so frightened of other people who have… _powers_ too,” says Steve simply, giving his head a little shake. He takes a deep breath as though physically shouldering the information.

“It’s one thing when they’re watching heroes in costume save the city with a powerful organization backing them up,” says Natasha pointedly, giving Steve a sideways look. “It’s another thing entirely when it could be some child in their kid’s class, or a clerk at the bank, or a mugger in a dark alley.”

Natasha herself isn’t entirely on either side of the debate – but then, she’s rarely on either side of any debate these days. There are some good things about the idea. More bad things, maybe, but she’s not sure. Good people and bad people supporting either side, but the bad people are always loudest. She shrugs. “It’s been building up for a while now.  There were a few isolated incidents as far back as the sixties and seventies; I remember it being in the papers. You can’t even imagine how terrified people were. _Mutant_ ’s been a dirty word for a long time now.”

She feels Steve’s strange look before she sees it, focused on their path and scanning for any unlikely threats. He’s staring at her intently, face twisted up in confusion as though he’s attempting to translate something from another language. “As in... the nineteen sixties and seventies?” He asks, but when she nods he looks even more confused.  He pauses, apparently attempting to choose his words carefully.

“Natasha,” says Steve quietly, a stillness in his voice that makes her pause. “You can’t possibly be older than thirty. How could you remember something like that?”

Pausing mid-step, her sudden stillness forces Steve to stop as well. She turns and looks Steve very evenly in the eye.

She remembers a great deal more, of course, than the smooth youth of her face would ever let on. She remembers red and yellow splattered across her world in an endless parade of propaganda posters, remembers the brutality with which she helped crush the Czechoslovakians when they were brave and stupid enough to revolt. She remembers Vietnam, and the SALT treaties, and the Solidarity that brought her world crashing down around her ears. She remembers the fall of the wall and perestroika and glasnost, remembers the day she started killing for the highest bidder instead of a flag on a map and a head full of false memories.

She remembers meeting Clint Barton, fresh-faced and young, so _young_ , as he pointed his bow at her heart. As he looked her right in her glazed and deadened eyes, faltered, and slowly asked if there was _anyone still in there?_ before lowering his bow to the ground.

A strand of hair has fallen across her face during the walk, tinting the world with bright red. Natasha pushes it back behind her ear. Her lips feel too rigid, and the sound of the birds chirping away in nearby trees is abruptly jarring. She feels a flicker of directionless anger flare up in the base of her stomach.  

“Tell me, Cap – you ever been sick at all since the army made you its own little experiment?” she asks, not liking how raw her voice sounds, how _vulnerable_.  She can’t seem to stop, though. “I don’t mean recovering from your deep freeze, I mean _sickness_. The flu, a case of the sniffles, anything.” Silence is his only response. There is a slow rigidity spreading over his face; a bewilderment that is slowly changing into something quietly horrified. “What about aging? A gray hair or two, a wrinkle, aches and pains that were never there before.” No answer. “Anything?”

Across from her, Steve swallows. “I haven’t...” he trails off, the word thin and uneven with something close to panic. He looks strangely small despite his height and bulk, his shoulders hunched over.

“You haven’t and you won’t. At least, not for a long while.” She purses her lips, looking past him into the distance. She can’t see anything but endless rows of similar-looking houses, all lined up one after the other. “They never replicated the serum they used on you exactly, Steve, but that didn’t stop them from trying. You and I weren’t born: we were _made_ , and the KGB made me just as much as the American government made you.” She shrugs. “Assuming we don’t die fighting the good fight, you and I are going to be around long after the rest of them are dust.”

Standing stock-still, Steve seems to be struck completely dumb as the meaning of her words properly sinks in. She looks at his face properly for the first time in a while, sees the way his expression has fallen and his eyes look so _lost_. Bright and blue and so full of grief, all of it splayed across his face like a book she’s memorized by heart. His hands are clenching at his sides, as though barely restraining himself from charging into some imagined line of fire.

But there’s no enemy to battle in this; no soldiers to lead and rally, no firing line to throw himself in front of.

It strikes her as achingly _appropriate_ that the Americans took the serum and created a super soldier; someone to wave their flag and lead the charge, to dress up in red, white, and blue and become the figurehead of a nation. That, when handed the same technology, her own people chose to design the exact opposite. A creature of whispered words and knives in the dark.

“It’s okay,” Natasha hears herself say after a long period of silence, the words slightly stilted. She mentally gives herself a little shake, trying to put herself in his shoes. To understand what he might be thinking. Natasha isn’t particularly good at comforting people, though. Never has been, and god knows she probably never will be. “We learn.” She pauses, catching the bright blue of his eyes with her own. “We adapt. We live.”

Silence hangs between them like a physical presence for a few dangling moments, and Steve’s expression is completely unreadable for a long time. After a long while, though, Steve nods. He bites down on his lower lip, looking at her as though Natasha has turned his whole world upside down without blinking.

The moment may be over, but there’s a new feeling in the air between them now that wasn’t there before. One of silent companionship beyond S.H.I.E.L.D., and missions, and the _fighting the_ _good fight_ ; something that isn’t half so clear cut as either of them would like it to be.

They are a pair of fixed points in time and space in a world that ages and crumbles and dies, two people who were created to perform a very specific job. Two people who have outlived their original function and will spend the rest of their lives grappling with the consequences.

“Come on,” says Natasha, tilting her head in the direction they had been walking before the conversation had suddenly become more serious. She tries to smile, managing to get a hesitant grin from him in response. It’s largely for show, but she thinks there might be a core of something real in there; a hint of closure that hadn’t been there before like the sun breaking through clouds. “We’re going to have to bullshit the report to Fury anyways. May as well actually do the walk to make it more convincing.”

“Yeah,” says Steve after a pause, shaking his head. “Yeah, good idea.”

She leads the way like before.

There are no sudden mutant attacks to make things more interesting.

As expected, the report is mostly bullshit with a pair of signatures at the bottom.

 

\--

 

Days pass, and weeks follow in their stead. The reconstruction of New York City continues on as planned, the rubble swept up and new scaffolding rising into the air, and Natasha continues to persistently keep in touch with Steve Rogers.

She does it in big ways and she does it in small ways, but most of all she does it in ways that bend the exact definition of _ethical_ because she’s never seen the point in following rules if she doesn’t have to. The single overflowing bookshelf in Steve’s apartment has been resolutely stuck in her head for ages now, so a month after she takes Steve to patrol around Xavier’s school she arranges for two bookshelves – not premade, still flat and unassembled and nestled in cardboard boxes because Steve needs more things to focus on in his life – to be left in the middle of his living room during the night. The note she leaves on top of the shelves is simple:

_Gotta get you caught up on your reading list, Cap, and you’re seventy years behind._

Clint helps with choosing the books she leaves along with the shelves, because Natasha honestly has no idea what a young American man from the 1940’s would consider to be important reading material. It helps that Clint has always been eerily good at looking at a situation, picking out the most important information, and giving solid advice. He chooses _The Hollow_ , _All the King’s Men_ , _Hiroshima_ , _Zorba the Greek_ , and _Adventures in Time and Space_ as a starting selection. All published in 1946 – and next week she’ll send over five more published in 1947.

Steve doesn’t mention the gift out loud at all, but when Natasha stops in the next day he grips her shoulder for a very long time and looks so tragically grateful it almost _hurts_. By the time she arrives both shelves have already been carefully assembled, framing either side of the radio in the living room like wooden soldiers standing at attention. (If Captain Rogers had any difficulty assembling IKEA furniture for the very first time he keeps the matter to himself.) A few of the overflowing books from his old shelves have been migrated to one of the new ones, but the other remains almost completely empty except for four solitary books tucked happily into the upmost corner. _All the King’s Men_ sits atop the dining room table, a bookmark tucked inside.

She takes him out for food he has never eaten, to visit parts of New York that sprung up while he slept. Getting cable and internet set up in Steve’s apartment is easy enough, and the way the text messages keep pouring into his phone make Natasha suspect that she isn’t the only one trying to get him back into the world for more than just saving it. 

It’s a slow process, but Natasha doesn’t mind. She was made for this, for détentes and gathering intelligence and mutually assured destruction, and no one plays the waiting game quite like she does.

To her amusement, the things that Steve does and does not adjust well to are not always what she expects. The CGI in the blockbuster action flick Natasha takes him to doesn’t startle him in the slightest, even when she half-expects it to, and discussing the fact that the current President of the United States is a black man just makes him _smile_ in a privately victorious way that makes her want to grin unabashedly right back.  After leaving a ticket to a Brooklyn Cyclones game on his dining room table, however, she spends the next week receiving text messages about how _appalling_ it is that the Brooklyn Dodgers aren’t even the Brooklyn Dodgers anymore, and _isn’t that some kind of affront to what it means to be American_? until she actually changes her phone number for a day to avoid hearing any more about it.

The two of them are out for sushi – real, _proper_ sushi because Natasha is notoriously picky about the food she puts in her body when post-saving the world celebrations aren’t involved – when Steve excuses himself politely to go to the bathroom, leaving his cell phone trustingly on the table. She waits until the exact moment the bathroom door swings shut before she’s reaching for it, calmly scrolling through his recent text conversations.

Aside from herself, the last person he communicated with was Tony Stark just over thirty minutes ago. She clicks on the conversation, quietly committing its contents to memory without a single twinge of guilt.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:14)  
** So you and Dana Scully are heading out on another field trip to the real world, I hear.

 **Cptn Steve Rogers (** **2012-08-09 18:15)  
** I’m guessing you mean Natasha? And yes, we are.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:15)  
** Where are you headed?

 **Cptn Steve Rogers (** **2012-08-09 18:16)  
** Getting ‘real’ sushi, apparently. I’m not quite sure where – she just gave me an address and told me to meet her. I’m just walking the last few blocks now.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:16)  
** Don’t eat the puffer fish.

 **Cptn Steve Rogers (** **2012-08-09 18:17)  
** Pardon?

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:17)  
** Nothing, don’t worry about it

 **Cptn Steve Rogers (** **2012-08-09 18:19)  
** Okay. I’m really hoping I like it; I’m excited to give it a try, but I was in the middle of a really good part of my book and it almost killed me to put it down to come over here.

**Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:19)  
** You’re such a nerdy poindexter, Jesus. I forget sometimes.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:19)  
** You should start a campaign or something

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:19)  
** “Captain America supports improved literacy: the recommended reading list by our nation’s symbol himself!”

 **Cptn Steve Rogers (** **2012-08-09 18:20)  
** Haha. Very funny.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:20)  
** I’m very aware, it’s one of my best features.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:25)  
** We have one of the best libraries in the world just down the road from Stark Tower, you know.

 **Cptn Steve Rogers (** **2012-08-09 18:27)  
** Tony...

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:27)  
** I know, I know.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:27)  
** Just.

 **Tony Stark** **(** **2012-08-09 18:28)  
** The offer still stands.

  
Steve’s cell phone is sitting innocently on the table when he returns from the bathroom, and Natasha greets him coolly before snatching a piece of inari off his plate.

 

\--

 

When Steve abruptly leaves town without contacting anyone, S.H.I.E.L.D makes no move to stop him. He doesn’t call or text anyone explaining where he is, doesn’t leave any kind of note. If he were anyone else in the world, it would be very much like Steve Rogers had fallen off the face of the earth. As it is, S.H.I.E.L.D’s monitoring systems and worldwide organization of informants mean that his movement continues to be recorded and documented with ruthless efficiency.

Natasha, however, doesn’t have to rely on tracking systems or airport security footage to know where Steve is going. As soon as his disappearance is noticed, she sends a message to one of her contacts in London with detailed instructions. Three hours later one of her burner phones lights up with a text message informing her of the exact moment Steve’s plane lands at Heathrow.

At the end of every day of Steve’s stay in England, Natasha receives an e-mail with a brief and efficient write-up of his movements along with a series of attached photographs. Long-focus lens snapshots of Steve checking into a hotel, Steve walking in and out of Meadow Park Long-Term Care Centre, Steve eating alone in the same small restaurant night after night.

After a week and a half Natasha finally receives a picture of Steve standing among a small crowd of people dressed in black under a cloudy sky. His back has that familiar military straightness, his face showing no outward signs of emotion. There is a modest bouquet of flowers in his hands, and even with people on either side of him there is something desperately _alone_ in how he stares at the plot of earth in front of him. Despite the slightly blurry shot, she can tell that he is clutching the flowers so hard the stems look close to snapping.

Steve stays in London for another week after that, but Natasha doesn’t need to see any more. She informs her contact that there is no further need for surveillance.

 

\--

 

Three days after Steve comes back to New York Natasha knocks on his door, three quick raps against the wood before standing and waiting expectantly. It takes almost half a minute before the door opens, Steve peering out warily. He is dressed in a blue t-shirt and sleep pants, and his eyes have a sunken look that she knows isn’t just exhaustion. He blinks in mild surprise at the sight of her on his doorstep.

“Natahsa?” he asks slowly, his eyes crinkling in obvious confusion. “… what are you doing?”

She cocks an eyebrow and shoots him a wry look. “It’s seven o’clock, Cap. Hardly too late for a house call.” Without pausing she leans down and picks up one of the massive crates on the floor next to her, its contents far too heavy for any normal human her size to be able to lift so easily, and gives him a look that suggests he move out of her way. He opens the door and steps back obediently, allowing her to take the crate and walk right into his house.

“I mostly meant that you don’t usually bother with the whole knocking thing,” Steve clarifies, wordlessly picking up the other crate and bringing it inside without being asked.  He puts his crate down next to hers in the kitchen, straightening up and shoving a hand through his unusually untidy hair. He doesn’t sound upset at her arrival, or pleased, or anything other than profoundly, desperately tired. 

“I knock when I feel like it,” she says without a trace of a smile, looking at him very seriously. Steve just gives her a look in response. She quirks her lips. “I just don’t feel like it much.”

She gives him a quick once-over while he’s distracted examining the crates on his kitchen floor, and Natasha doesn’t need any special abilities or information to know that Steve Rogers is not in a good way. He looks exhausted, _thin_ , and even though there is no physical possibility of him being anything but perfectly healthy he still manages to project the appearance of a man on his last legs. He almost seems to waver where he stands, and the rumpled blanket thrown across the couch in the living room makes her suspect that her visit may have woken him from a middle-of-the-day nap.

“Your files says that your body metabolizes alcohol too quickly for you to get drunk,” says Natasha mildly, kneeling down to physically pull the lid off the crate without bothering to go for a crowbar. It groans and then opens with a satisfying _pop_. Steve frowns, crouching down so that both of them are at eye level with the opened crate between them.

“Yeah,” says Steve, clearly confused and not understanding where this is going. “I tried, once. Didn’t take. The doctors said it was a side-effect of the serum.”

The contents of the crate is buried under a thick layer of real straw, but when Natasha reaches in and plucks out one of the bottles Steve’s eyebrows rise so high that she almost wants to laugh out loud.

“You haven’t been trying hard enough,” she declares, giving the bottle of Stolichnaya vodka a little waggle in mid-air. He opens his mouth, letting out a small noise and looking between the two crates with a look of disbelief on his face.

“How many bottles in each crate?” he asks warily, mild horror creeping into his voice. She grins.

“Twelve,” says Natasha, her voice completely neutral, before she starts lining the bottles up on the kitchen table. “Get us two glasses – _glasses_ , not shot glasses. We’re going to do this right.”

 

\--

 

Two hours and seven bottles later and Steve is becoming decidedly more open. 

“The _food_ ,” Steve exclaims earnestly, gesticulating with his hand and sloshing a large amount of vodka over the side of the glass. His cheeks are flushed and his hair is messy, and his words had started to slur an hour ago. “If there’s one damn thing I’ve noticed, it’s the food. Have you _seen_ the grocery stores nowadays?” He doesn’t wait for her to answer before continuing.  “There’s so _much_. Endless food in boxes and bags and shipped in fresh from half-way around the world. Strawberries in September and hundreds of different kinds of potato chips and cold cereal and no one even _thinks_ about it.” He laughs, half-amused and half-bitter. “Hell, when I grew up Central Park had its own tent city. I knew people who would stand in line for a meal at the soup kitchen for hours, and they were damn happy to have it.”

She nods, leaning over the table to top up his glass to the brim. They’ve been drinking vodka like water, knocking back whole glasses of the stuff like they were shots, and if they were anything approaching normal human beings they both would have been dead hours ago.

 “It’s just…” Steve trails off, taking another big gulp of his vodka and wincing after swallowing it down. “Everything’s so fast. Electrical and portable and imported and modified, and even fruit doesn’t taste the way it used to.”

Part of Natasha is smugly pleased that this worked: dramatically increasing the speed and scale of alcohol consumption has always been her own personal solution to the inability to get drunk, but it’s comforting to know that it works on Steve as well. It’s a rare thing that she feels the need to give up control like this – _delayed reaction time and impaired perception and judgement, too dangerous to let go, can’t relax, have to be on guard_ – but it’s nonetheless very, very apparent that her tolerance for this quantity of alcohol is still considerably higher than Steve’s. There’s a buzzing in her head and a slight underwater-like feeling to the air, but she can tell without asking that Steve is much farther gone than she is.

It’s the first time Steve has ever really _talked_ to her about his experience, about the differences between his old life and his new one, and she doesn’t intend to waste the opportunity.

“Hey,” Natasha, jerking her head to get his attention. Steve glances up, looking slightly lost. “ _Prost_ ,” she announces, raising her glass in the air. Steve dutifully picks up his own glass and clinks it against hers.

“ _Prost_ ,” he agrees solemly, and somewhere along the line they apparently lost the irony of toasting in German. They drink deep. The burn of the vodka is little more than a tingling in Natasha’s throat, not too much different from chugging beer, but Steve makes a scrunched expression and gives his head a disgusted shake once his own glass is drained.

 _Are you insulting my national beverage?_ she wants to ask, the wry remark already on the tip of her tongue, but she stops herself as soon as she picks up on his body language. Steve stares down at the table, quiet and thoughtful, his brow deeply furrowed.

“I know it’s not all bad,” Steve clarifies softly, twirling the glass idly in his hands. “The good things are… really damn good.” He lets out a humourless laugh. “Everyone can sit on the same bus together, go to school together. That’s something. That’s right.” He looks up at her and smiles a wry, private smile. “Women can go to work without half the world kicking up a fuss, without the excuse of ‘desperate measures for the wartime effort’.” He says the last part in an officious, mocking voice, shaking his head and looking down into his empty glass. “It was hard for my mom, y’know. We were all alone and we needed to get by somehow, but people still talked. They talked until the day she died.”

“They always do,” she replies, shrugging minutely, and Steve nods in agreement. She looks down into her glass.

Natasha thinks about the way drug lords and politicians and even other agents dismiss her with a glance, the way people never quite expect her to be able to pull her own weight until they actually see it happen. She thinks about how hard it had been for Fury to fight his way to the top in the face of unfounded doubts and concerns, about how often it’s her job to wear a low-cut dress and collect intelligence at extravagant parties without anyone ever registering her as a potential threat.

“It’s not perfect,” she adds, looking up at him. “But you’re right: it is better.”

Shaking his head, Steve lets out a choked little laugh.

“Some of the… the people I knew. They would have been real happy to know that.” He reaches across the table, actually filling up his own glass this time. He throws back a third of it all at once, then slams the glass down on the kitchen table with too much force. His eyes are squeezed tight shut. Natasha leans forward.

“You know what the stupidest thing is?” Steve asks slowly, and she can see that his hands are visibly shaking. Natasha feels her whole body go still and quiet as she waits for him to continue, knowing instinctively that _this_ is what she’s been waiting for. _This_ is the reason she’s been wearing away at him for months, chipping away edges and getting to the heart of what makes Steve Rogers tick. He doesn’t say anything at all for a few long minutes but she doesn’t ask any questions. Doesn’t prompt him in any way, doesn’t think for a moment he forgot his train of thought. She just sits, and holds back, and waits for the words to come.

“The stupidest thing is,” Steve finally continues, enunciating each word carefully without ever opening his eyes. “That I keep… I keep thinking _when I go back_ , you know?” His voice wavers on the last word. “It’s been months, and we’ve done so much, but I can’t… I can’t wrap my head around the idea that this is it. That this is how it goes. I keep waiting, you know – to wake up back home, or to find something we overlooked.” He opens his eyes, looking determinedly at some point in the distance. His words sound empty, listless. “It feels like… like if I just looked hard enough. If I just _wanted_ it hard enough…”

And right there – _there_ – is the root of why Steve hasn’t wanted to accept Tony Stark’s offer. For all that Steve had fought alongside them and read modern books and lived in this new world, part of him has never truly believed that it was permanent. That all of this – the cell phones, and the supermarkets, and the Brooklyn Dodgers – was his life now. He had held on to that hope to the point where he refused to move forward despite all the common sense in the world. Had closed himself off and tucked himself away, desperately clinging to the fantasy and unable to quite let it go.

Until he lost the last person tying him to that old life. The most important person.

Natasha hurts for him. She’s hurt for him for months as the two of them grew closer and closer, as she gathered information and made progress and pushed him out of his comfort zone. As he went from a colleague to something resembling a friend. To someone she can trust.

Natasha hurts for him, but she’s never been any good at showing her hurt.

“It doesn’t work that way, Cap,” she says softly, giving her head a little shake. He doesn’t seem to react to her words, still caught up in a world of his own. “You know it doesn’t.”

They are silent for a few long moments. The alcohol is still buzzing at the edges of Natasha’s brain, but she knows that this is the moment she’s been waiting for.

“When you went missing in 1945, a number of your personal effects remained back at your basecamp,” Natasha says abruptly, voice even and controlled, and Steve’s head snaps up. He looks suddenly awake. “As I understand, there was an attempt to return them to your closest surviving kin. When that failed they were held in a secure military storage facility for a number of years. I gather there were a few people who weren’t quite prepared to throw them away.”

Steve is looking right at her now, something confused and brittle in the way he holds himself, in the lines of his face. He’s a big man, she knows; broad and muscled and taller than she is, but in this moment he looks very small indeed. Without hesitating, Natasha reaches down into her handbag and plucks out a small paper envelope.

“The rest of your belongings are in the mail; they should arrive in the morning. But I thought you might want to have this particular item as soon as possible.”

Their drinks are completely forgotten. Steve is staring at her as though he can’t quite comprehend what he’s seeing, his eyes flitting back and forth between her eyes and the envelope in her hand. His lips are tight, brow furrowed, and his whole body is unnaturally still.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” she says, quietly and honestly, and hands him the envelope. He takes it from her hands as though it might shatter, the yellowed paper crinkling minutely under his fingers. He tears the envelope and tips its contents onto his opened palm.

The ring is small and simple, just a silver band with a single large diamond nestled into the setting. It isn’t ostentatious – isn’t even particularly delicate-looking – and from what Natasha has seen of her file she very much thinks that Peggy Carter would have liked it.

The stone glints and catches the light as Steve raises it up in front of his face, unblinking and completely unreadable, his fingers seemingly oversized and clumsy in contrast to the slimness of the band. She pushes her chair a little closer without him noticing. Not so close that they’re touching, but near enough to feel the way Steve is shaking next to her. She looks him in the eyes, holds his gaze, and listens.

“I got it when we were on leave,” says Steve quietly, turning the ring around in his fingers. He can’t seem to stop staring at it. His voice sounds hollowed out. “This little town in Italy, I can’t even remember the name. There was this tiny little jeweller’s – I don’t think he’d had any business in months.”

He looks at her then, blinking hard, chin starting to tremble. “She was so _sick_ ,” he says, voice breaking on the last word, and Natasha knows they aren’t talking about the war anymore. His hands clench on the table, eyes shining as his voice wavers and shakes. “She was so sick, with her hair all white and so _frail_ , like she might break if I touched her. And…” Steve trails off, shaking his head and clenching his jaw. “She didn’t remember me. Didn’t remember her own _family_. They had to ask me to leave, when I first went to visit her. I made her _agitated_.”

There’s a desperate look in his eyes, _begging_ her to understand. “She was so much stronger than me,” he says quietly, voice catching hard. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. I was going to…” A broken-sounding noise escapes his throat, drowning out the words. “When all of it was over, I was going to ask her…”

Without saying a word, Natasha reaches out – and carefully places her hand on top of his. He looks at her with eyes that shine too brightly in the light, face twisted up in utter devastation.

“ _Tasha_ ,” Steve chokes out, his voice broken and lonely and completely shattered, and it’s the first time that anyone but Clint has called her that in years.

He breaks, then. Crashing down all at once, like a marionette with its strings cut.

Natasha watches it happen; sits next to him into the small hours of the morning, listening and nodding and contributing when he needs her to. All of it seems to pour out of him at once, all of it pried out and hashed over. Every barrier systematically broken down.

When Steve can’t talk anymore they just sit, the table still littered with empty bottles, existing together in the same time and space.

She doesn’t say much.

He doesn’t need her to.

 

\--

 

**Barton (** **2012-09-12 8:09)**

did it go okay?

**Nat (2012-09-12 8:45)**

I think he’s going to be fine.

 

\--

 

A week later, a S.H.I.E.L.D memorandum goes out alerting everyone that Captain Steve Rogers has decided to take Tony Stark up on his offer to join him, Bruce Banner, and Thor in residence at the new Avengers Tower.

When the e-mail appears in her inbox Natasha texts Clint, texts Tony, and then immediately begins writing the memorandum regarding hers and Clint’s own official acceptance.

 

\--

 

The day they move into the new Avengers Tower, Thor and Jane Foster surprise them all by making lunch for everyone. There’s roast beef and salad, mashed potatoes and fresh-baked rolls, as well as some kind of Asgardian dish that smells confusingly like cayenne and peppermint. Darcy Lewis brews three pots of absurdly strong coffee, making ridiculous little jokes as Thor stands by with his arms crossed and a genuine look of happiness on his face.

Tony is completely in his element, gesturing madly as he explains the particular rationale of all of their quarters. It doesn’t surprise Natasha in the slightest that there had already been three rooms prepared for her, Clint, and Steve long before they ever officially accepted his offer.

“Top floor for you, Robin Hood,” he tells Clint self-assuredly, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and grinning over his shades. Clint’s face is dead-serious, the expression he always gets when he’s trying too hard not to smile. “Also, did I tell you R&D’s working on a new line of incendiary arrows you might be interested in?”

“I think you might have mentioned that. Once, twice. A dozen times.” Bruce’s voice is sardonic and somewhat muffled as he carries a large box of what Natasha recognizes as Clint’s belongings into the elevator. Apparently he didn’t agree with Tony’s insistence that the moving should be left to the movers.

“Tony…” Pepper sighs, raising a hand to her temple. Tony grins.

A few feet away from all of them, Natasha watches it all happen with her arms crossed and the barest hint of a smile quirking at her lips. She doesn’t particularly want to join in the banter just yet, content to observe from the sidelines for now.

She senses Steve coming over to her without having to look in his direction, her eyes fixed on the chaotic efficiency in front of her instead. He sidles up next to her, neither of them speaking for a long moment. They stand there in comfort, not saying a word, for a few long minutes before he decides to break the silence.

“Natasha,” he says, voice quiet and serious, and she turns to face him properly.

He looks good – better than he has in months, she thinks. His hair is neat and tidy for the first time in a long time, and the exhaustion that had struck her so profoundly that night seems to have melted away. He’s tucked his white t-shirt into his belted khaki pants, a habit both she and Tony dutifully mock him for on a regular basis. The sunken look around his eyes seems has lightened. She notices that he has a copy of _Doctor Zhivago_ in his hand, one of the five books she had given him published in 1958.

“Cap?” she asks, raising her eyebrow. He holds her gaze for a long moment, extremely serious – before something relaxes in his face. He lets out a breath, reaches out – and places a single broad hand on her shoulder.

The _thank you_ in his eyes doesn’t need to be said out loud, which is good because she doesn’t want to hear it. It resonates louder like this, hanging between them like the camaraderie that she had felt so easily when they first met. There’s understanding there, and trust, and when she nods in understanding and smiles she gets to see his bright blue eyes light up.

Sometimes people need to be broken. It’s something she’s known for as long as she can remember, a lesson long-since burnt into her muscles and written across her brain in Cyrillic.

The most important part, though, is putting them back together again.

They move apart without a word, both of them turning around to watch the chaos of their coworkers – their _friends_ , Natasha corrects herself, completely thrown by the way the word sounds in her own head – scrambling to get everything moved into the correct rooms so they can all sit down and enjoy lunch. There are no threats to the planet right now to speak of; no aliens from another world pouring through the sky, no secret enemies from the past to dispatch.

They have an entire skyscraper and it still won’t be enough space for all of them. There are too many personalities all vying for attention or peace or both, and part of her still can’t believe that this is what she wants. It’s absolutely nothing like anything she can ever remember hoping for.

Living with all of these people is going to be pure insanity.

Privately, Natasha can’t wait to get started.

 

 

**The End**


End file.
